Should smaller lawns and drought-tolerant plants be required?

Elizabeth Stump in Castro Valley, CA recently sent us this story about new laws being debated in the San Francisco  Bay area that would:

• Limit lawn around new homes to 1/4 of the total landscape.  (More is allowed if homeowners can prove they're conserving water in other ways.) 
• Require that 80 percent of the remaining landscape be native or drought-tolerant plants, all of which must be surrounded by 2" of mulch. 
• Require "effective irrigation systems".  (Does this mean irrigation is required or that if you have irrigation, it must be effective?) 

This is on top of statewide water restrictions that went into effect this month mandating high-efficiency toilets and putting restrictions on the use of water in the garden.  (Hey, Californians, tell us more about that.)

About all that, Stump says: "Though I find my own personal need for expansive lawns unnecessary, I do find this legislating trend disconcerting.  Personally I find this in the same league as when Berkeley was going to mandate everyone get white/light colored roofs."  

Anybody else disconcerted, or do you think it's high time the government started regulating home landscapes?

Stump goes on to enlighten us Easterners about what irrigation really conserves water, and why it should be included in any legislation:

One thing they did not cover, that I wish they did, was the use of subsurface drip irrigation systems.  Some years back at the San Francisco Flower & Garden Show, the Urban Farm Store did a lecture on better irrigation and water usage[pdf]. They covered subsurface drip irrigation and talked about a test case where there was sections of median lawns at El Toro base, near San Diego, and how the old traditional sprinkler head system lead to much of the water being blown away from target zones and high evaporation rates, due to the near constant winds and low humidity.  They put in a subsurface drip irrigation system and used much less water and the grass lived and thrived.

I was so impressed with their case study, I plan on installing subsurface drip irrigation when I redo my sprinkler system - as I have none and I'm relying on battery timers, hoses and hand-placed sprinklers.

What Water Conservation Laws are you Seeing?
Stump ends with the suggestion we ask our dry-climate readers sort of water-use mandates are in effect or being considered where they live.  And if they're in effect, are they working?

Comments

[martin kemp]

I agree 100%. I have been turning my yard into a dry tolerant scape and plan on continuing to do so even though the draught is over. No grass, mostly shrubs, tree's and interesting foliages. I treated myself to one small area of floral that gets it's moisture from a rain barrel.

[Ginny Stibolt]

The mandated part bothers me, too. Maybe taxing more lawn acreage and charging more for water would do more.

Florida is divided into 5 water management districts. Each district makes its own rules for water use. Our district allows watering on two days of the week during daylight savings time, but only one during the standard time during the winter months. The days are set. And many people are upset that the only day that they can water in the winter is during the weekend--odd addresses on Saturdays and even addresses on Sundays. I see people watering on off days all the time, so until there are some teeth in the regulations, people will do what they want.

[Miriam Goldberger]

I don't agree with legislation that forces homeowners' landscaping decisions but I am pleased that the pending legislation is forcing landscapers and homeowners to rethink all aspects of lawn and looking at smarter irrigation and grass species choices. It will be interesting to see how thoroughly the water-use mandates are discussed at the upcoming CA Landscape Contractors meetings this coming week....

[greg draiss]

Absofuc&inglutely not!!!
Mr. Kemp I hope you never move to my town and run for election on a platform of telling me what to plant and where

REVOLUTION, REVOLUTION, Stop the garden Nazis
The TROLL

[Christopher C NC]

Legislating landscapes seems like the wrong route to take because the whole thing is so subjective, so site specific and well that depends.

I'm with Ginny in that a better way is to charge more or maybe even physically limit water consumption itself. That is the real issue. It can't be that difficult to come up with a water meter that could warn you at a certain point and then actually shut off your water for a period of time if you go over.

The reactionary TROLLS of the world as is their nature foam at the mouth and let the spittle fly, never wanting to deal with a real problem or offer any solutions. How typical.

[Lynn]

This is already happening extensively in the West, if not by gov't outright then by homeowner's associations, master-planned communities, or water dept "turf replacement" rebates that are too good to ignore. When I left Las Vegas, a friend had just bought into a community where no lawn was allowed, only xeriscaping with drip irrigation. Of course you can't paint your door red or leave your car in the driveway, either.

[Ali M]

Lesgislation rather than education, dumb!

[Ali M]

Oops, I meant legislation.

[Joseph Tychonievich]

Seems like I'm with most people on this: Saving water = good, legislating exact lawn size = dumb. If the issue is saving water, then they should limit that directly. Let people use X amount of water (or make it significantly more expensive after a certain number of gallons per months) and let people figure out how they want to make that work -- with a lawn or without.

[Laura Munoz]

I agree with Ginny above. I, too, don't think there should be laws that mandate homeowners' landscaping decisions. With that said, I also think conservation of water is critical.

Here, in Central Texas, many Homeowner Associations mandate lawns must be kept green. With this past summer's drought and water restrictions in effect in even the smallest towns, this was next to impossible, not to mention wasteful. Perhaps we should start with education of the Texas HOA's. (I say this because I know of someone in an HOA who was fined for not keeping their lawn green in the drought.)

While I think a green lawn can be lovely, I personally don't have one. I have a "lawn" of Bermuda and wild grasses in full sun that volunteered from my neighbor's yard. I never water or fertilize it. Sometimes it's pretty, sometimes it's not. The lawn isn't a priority for me like the garden beds are, and it would be outrageously expensive to keep it green in drought conditions or otherwise.

In regard to water restrictions, I think there needs to be flexibility. For example, my one day to water was Sunday, but watering two 85 ft beds and another 100 ft bed on Sunday before 10 a.m or after 7 p.m. is difficult for only one person to do with church, laundry, & other life events. Saturday would have worked much better; however, there was no flexibility in the rules.

[eliz]

Well, it's all very well to say that we shouldn't have legislation, but the fact is that in almost every municipality we already do, and it's worse than this. I would much rather have the city requiring me to conserve water than to mow down my high perennials in the front yard.

[Claire Splan]

I think the carrot-and-stick approach is better than legislation. I'd rather see heavy water users (whether they're using the water for lawns or just wasting it in general) heavily fined by the utility companies and I'd like to see those of us who keep our usage low given some credit. It's more effective, more fair, and there's no issue with who's going to enforce it.

[M.B. Allen]

Public education and persuasion are better than legislation and can be very effective, too.

There are reason, good ones, why people want lawns -- but they should be seen as a luxury, not an entitlement.

[Pam J.]

Ahh, those green lawns. They have certainly caused the world a whole lotta trouble. I know that many of you know about the link between green lawns and 9/11 but here’s the scoop again for those who haven’t heard it yet.
From http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1253796 (2003)
"Egyptian writer …Sayyid Qutb spent the better half of 1949 in Greeley, Colo., studying curriculum at Colorado State Teachers College… What he saw prompted him to condemn America as a soulless, materialistic place that no Muslim should aspire to live in.
"Qutb pointed out many things Americans take for granted as examples of the nation's culture of greed -- for example, the green lawns in front of homes in Greeley.
"Qutb became a leader of the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood on his return to Egypt. ..he was later accused of plotting against the government and executed in 1966. Qutb's writings would later become the theoretical basis for many radical Islamic groups of today -- including al Qaeda."

[Jean]

I say the government should limit the water usage and educate the public about what will work in their yards with limited water. But don't legistlate exactly what plants must be in place (I can imagine the nightmare about what's grandfathered in and what's not). My in-laws live in CA and where they live they have, believe it or not, an UNLIMITED amount of water they can use. That's because they're not billed on how much they use. Just one flat rate. When I first heard that I was flabbergasted, especially since we were living in Texas at that time, where droughts were (are) the norm. Public education is key to the crisis. And maybe some stimulus money to redo old yards??

[GenYgardener]

I'm okay with such legislation as long as it only applies to land undergoing development. In other words, the developers have to comply with the regulations, but they would cease affect once the home is owner-occupied.

I think we would see a major difference in water usage and public understanding of xeriscaping if all new subdivisions follow the regulations. I doubt many new homeowners would immediately rip out the plants and put in more lawn, especially after they see how much money they save in lawn services, fertilizer, water, etc.

[Kathy J, Washington Gardener Mag]

Will the law appply equally to office parks, shopping centers, etc. Putting all on home owners backs is no fair. Should start with commercial installation and new developments, then go on to the single home owner, who hopefully by that point would already be taking note and making the transition on their own.

[Elizabeth Stump]

I never said in my original email that subsurface drip irrigation should be included in legislation, but implied - though maybe I wasn't specific enough - that I was disappointed the article in the San Jose Mercury News did not include any efficient irrigation examples, such as subsurface drip irrigation as a counterpoint to the proposed legislation of lawn size to reduce water consumption.

I am very much against the idea of legislating the mandatory use of subsurface drip irrigation, but I would be in favor of it voluntarily, especially if it was included in rebate programs from the water company, much like getting rebates after putting in more energy efficient appliances.

Also, with the use of native plants, natives in California do not alway equate to low-water use. California has a wide variety of climates, from coastal rain forests to Mediterranean to alpine to steppes to desert. A bunch of native ferns that grow in a coastal redwood forest may be native, but not water efficient in the middle of one of the hotter Bay Area microclimates, such as Livermore where it BAKES at 110+ in the middle of summer. And there are non-natives that are not invasive and use very little water, such as many such plants from South Africa.

Common use should be used instead of knee-jerk legislation to a address water usage.

[susan harris]

Elizabeth, glad you cleared up my misrepresentation of your position.
See Linda Chalker-Scott's teachings about native plants tomorrow right here - echoing your excellent points. Here too in the East, you can't expect plants that are native to wet areas or woodlands to be drought-tolerant, esp in the sun. Again with the overgeneralization,right there in proposed legislation.

[Gloria]

I don't agree that water use is the only concern here. More and more munincipalities are learning the hard way about the cost of storm water runoff. Lawn isn't much better than impervious surfaces at absorbing fast moving water.
I do not believe that being forced to have less lawn is any different from forcing so many to have lawn.

Water restriction and or price increase would probably help some but education about watersheds and runoff pollution and what can be done will need to continue.

[Gloria]

opps..spell check...municipalities.

[Susan Tomlinson]

I live in the Great State of "You are not the Boss of Me" (Texas), and the citizens DO NOT like to be told they can't do something. So when our city's reservoir starting running dangerously low one summer, the city council and mayor called for a day of prayer.

This did not have the desired effect.

So the next year, in even more trouble, they announced that they were instituting water restrictions, but they wouldn't actually enforce them. They were, in effect, "a request" from the city.

You know what? It worked. So much so that the city lost revenue from charging for water because people stopped watering their lawns all the time in the summer and started moving to more xeric landscapes.

Our reservoir is still dangerously low, however, which is what you get when you have big population centers living in semi-arid or arid regions, It's just a fact of life. So the reality is, we need to do even more.

So yes, I think we ought to start showing some self-leadership and restricting landscapes that use too much water.

Sorry, but I don't think "personal liberty" always trumps everything all the time.

[tibs]

Water has always been way underpriced in America. People think it is a right to have as much as they want and that it shouldn't cost them much of anything at all. Have a miminum useage and charge more per gallon for any use over that amount. Flat rates and no metering is just wrong. People are willing to pay a lot for high speed internet, cable tv, cell phones but god forbid if their town raises their water rates. Anyone in office when that happens is guarenteed not to get re-elected.

I think I like living in a fly over state. We have water. And when we have lots of water it floods, but houses don't slide off cliffs. We don't have lots of land use rules (see The Troll's comment above.) That pretty much sums up the attitude when you try to impose any kind of regulations. If you want to get tarred and feathered and rode out of town on a rail just say the ultimage four letter word: Rural Zoning.

[frank@nycgarden]

Lawn is still the magic cloak. If you only raise water prices, then only the wealthy will have lawns, and the magical image will be reinforced. The lawn is a parcel of our system. Changing the system will meet resistance in myriad forms, and one news story that shows how foolish this is (or was) will change the public perception and the tide against any reformation will rise.

Too many people with the same wants. Too little water to fulfill those wants. What should we do?

People will drive off this cliff since we built a road right to its edge. Put up a few signs that say "Cliff Ahead" and some will read the signs and put on the brakes, but some will drive off. Build a bridge and we can all go safely over the cliff. What is our bridge over our water shortages? People, we're on the road, going fast...

[Curmudgeon Geographer]

If a state can control how much water flows through your toilet or sprinkler, there is absolutely no limit on what else they can tell control about your life. So, rather than forbid more water from flowing to a citizen's home, just progressively price increased water use like they do for income taxes. With the extra earned from water splurgers going to reduce water consumption in areas of poverty.